06 October 2013

"I am here" art project

"I am here" was installed on the Haggerston Estate - an estate in steady decline since the 1980s - in September 2009. The future of the estate has been contested for some 30 years, and since 2004 no new tenants have been accepted, but empty flats boarded up. Now the estate is set to be demolished and a new estate built on this canal-side property, in an area that over the past ten years has become increasingly gentrified.

The project shows the faces of ordinary people so often excluded from the visual material produced to market an up-and-coming area. The photos replace the rather terrifying orange boards put up (by whom?) over the boarded windows; 98% of residents were in favour of replacing the boards with photos, and the project went ahead.

The artwork is produced by Fugitive Images, an artist collaboration founded in 2009 by Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Lasse Johansson and Tristan Fennell - long-term residents on the estate. "Fugitive Images explores the subtle and haunting traces of memory and desire that weave together identities and communities, while seeking close and sustained collaborations within communities. Their aim is to develop reflective production methods and create imaginative works at the intersection of documentary, fiction, and collective dreaming." Read more about the project here.

Tuesday is Drawing Day - why not join in, wherever you are? Find somewhere that has interesting things - it needn't be a museum, it could be your own home! - and just draw, using whatever media you want. Ask some friends to join you, then have a nice lunch.

The London group has grown to the point where it's getting difficult to find a cafe table large enough, and reluctantly I must say that it is no longer open to new members.